Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care About Jews, the South, and Civil Rights - Hardcover

Hartnett, Kimberly Marlowe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1469621037 ISBN 13: 9781469621036

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr, 2015

Synopsis

This first comprehensive biography of Jewish American writer and humorist Harry Golden (1903-1981)--author of the 1958 national best-seller Only in America--illuminates a remarkable life intertwined with the rise of the civil rights movement, Jewish popular culture, and the sometimes precarious position of Jews in the South and across America during the 1950s.

After recounting Golden's childhood on New York's Lower East Side, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett points to his stint in prison as a young man, after a widely publicized conviction for investment fraud during the Great Depression, as the root of his empathy for the underdog in any story. During World War II, the cigar-smoking, bourbon-loving raconteur landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and founded the Carolina Israelite newspaper, which was published into the 1960s. Golden's writings on race relations and equal rights attracted a huge popular readership. Golden used his celebrity to editorialize for civil rights as the momentous story unfolded. He charmed his way into friendships and lively correspondence with Carl Sandburg, Adlai Stevenson, Robert Kennedy, and Billy Graham, among other notable Americans, and he appeared on the Tonight Show as well as other national television programs. Hartnett's spirited chronicle captures Golden's message of social inclusion for a new audience today.

About this title

About the Author:

Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She worked as a journalist for more than thirty years in New England and the Pacific Northwest.

Review:

This highly readable portrait makes the case for Harry Golden as both a historically significant and truly inimitable character.--Leonard Rogoff, author of Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina
This lively and engaging book brings within a single biographical purview the history of journalism, the South, the civil rights movement, and American Jews.--Stephen J. Whitfield, author of In Search of American Jewish Culture
In a book both sweeping and meticulous, raucous and thoughtful, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett not only chronicles the remarkable life of Harry Golden, but gives us new insight into the unique relationship of American Jews and African Americans. It is a superb, enjoyable, and enlightening work.--David Boardman, Dean of the School of Media and Communication, Temple University
Harry Golden was a world-class character, a masterful storyteller who used his quick wit and humor to ridicule southern segregation with outrageous but hilarious satire to carve out an improbable place in American and southern Jewish history. We can thank Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett for her well-researched biography, bringing to life for a whole new generation the man who wrote the smashing best-seller called Only in America.--Eli N. Evans, author of The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South
This honest and humorous volume brings the memory of Harry Golden to life as a man and a public figure, with all his charms and flaws exposed, and puts him in the context of his times. He was an essential partner in the civil rights movement, and the United States could use another Harry Golden today, someone who can puncture political posturing as deftly as he did. Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett shows that doing what Golden did took not only intelligence and imagination but also considerable personal courage.--Jack Claiborne, author of The Charlotte Observer: Its Time and Place, 1896–1986
Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett's fascinating new book, Carolina Israelite, reminds us of the old aphorism that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Written in sparkling prose and bristling with insight, her authoritative biography of Harry Golden reconstructs the extraordinary life of a Jewish ex-con from New York who, after resettling in North Carolina in 1941, became a best-selling author and a powerful voice for civil rights and social justice. The author's gift for storytelling rivals that of her protagonist, and the book is a joy to read from start to finish.--Raymond Arsenault, author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice
I've always wondered about the man behind the newspaper the Carolina Israelite and the best-selling book Only in America and now I know: in her engaging and wonderfully written biography, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett has given us a vivid portrait of a man, a place, and his time.--Daniel Horowitz, author of On the Cusp: The Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1469621037
• ISBN 13: 9781469621036
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 359